Getting started AutoCAD Civil 3D CVEN2012 Spring 2016

If you would like help learning the basics of AutoCAD Civil 3D before starting the project in the class, see

the links below. I included the most useful sources I know of, so you can learn the basics quickly and

perhaps struggle a little less as you complete the project.

You may complete the project entirely by hand (no computer drawing). This will give you an

understanding of topography because when you do the triangulation manually, rather than relying on

Civil 3D to do it for you, you will get a feeling for what contours actually represent in three dimensions.

Unfortunately, I have heard of many vases where professional surveyors got into serious trouble when

they rely on CAD too much and fail to use common sense checks routinely. Practical understanding is

much more important in practice than being proficient in computer programs. If you need to

understand AutoCAD Civil 3D at your office, they will teach you in much greater detail than we can cover

in this class; at this point you should be getting a solid foundation in the fundamentals of surveying.

While AutoCAD is generally being phased out of use for structural engineering drawings and replaced

with Revit, the Civil 3D component of AutoCAD is widely used in grading and land planning, so learning

the program would be very useful to you if you plan to do civil design and planning.

CAD tutorials (from the most basic to advanced features of CAD)

http://mycadsite.com/tutorials/index.htm

Civil 3D (these pertain specifically to the surveying features of CAD Civil 3D (inserting points,

creating surfaces, adjusting topographic lines, and so on)

Go to this link and click the “Access Lynda” link (see arrow below:

http://www.colorado.edu/oit/lynda

After signing into Lynda, go to this link in the same browser:

http://www.lynda.com/Civil-3D-tutorials/Civil-3D-Essential-Training/187856-2.html

This source contains a pretty comprehensive training in Civil 3D, and if you want to intern with a

company doing civil infrastructure, you should consider going through the tutorials and simultaneously

completing them in CAD. Otherwise, here are the ones I recommend you complete to do well in this

class:

Chapter 2 Creating and Managing Points

“Creating point groups”

Chapter 3 Defining Existing Ground Surfaces – all six videos:

“Creating a surface from point data”

“Controlling Build Properties”

“Adding breaklines to improve accuracy”

“Editing surface triangulation”

“Labeling contours”

“Understanding object layers”

Name:

Lab Day:

Group Number:

Degrees Minutes Seconds

0.0000 (Degrees)

Degrees Minutes Seconds

0 0 0 0.0000 (Degrees)

Point

#Degrees Minutes Seconds

Horizontal

Angle

(degrees)

Horizontal

Distance

(feet)

Vertical

Distance

(feet)

DescriptionAzimuth from True

North (degrees)

Departure

(feet)Latitude (feet) X (feet) Y (feet) Z (feet)

A 0.0000

Total Station at: B 0.0000

Backsight to: C 0.0000

1 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

2 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

3 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

4 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

5 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Backsight angle reading on instrument (sighting from B

to C). Usually 0d 0m 0s

Decimal form

Horizontal Angle

Decimal form

Tra

vers

e

Sta

tio

ns

Azimuth of Line B to C.

been6447

Text Box

Single-word (only the first word will be imported into CAD)